After another thread mentioned some alternate sources for HDTV rips, I was able to download some French-language versions based on the same UK SkyTV rips. However, these were much higher bit-rate, and not re-encodes. As such, they are not quite the quality of the German rips, but close. The colors match almost perfectly and they generally look much better than the "hV" versions.

So I'm curious about these French versions. What kind of a/v specs do they have compared to the German ones?

No, sorry, I’ve been really busy this school year, and I have some outside projects going on as well. I stand where I stood in October. I do have plans of hopping back into this within the next couple of weeks. At that point ROTS should be done first, and fairly quickly.

I’d also like to try some new approaches to fixing some of the encoding issues present. Namely, I’d like to try out a median script with some motion adaptive frame registration thanks to althor 😃 Until then, I may be able to make ANH available through alternate means.

Updates: I’ve not had tons of time to work lately, as I was in the process of moving, and finishing up some things for work.

I have been able to spend a few days earlier this month working on a method for combining the different sources. I have been using the median of three method to combine them. Unfortunately it has not worked to fully eliminate all of the problems with the German Premiere source. Basically, it’s able to remove encoding errors, but leaves some trace artifacts. Also, it tends to smooth out fine detail in the picture. The good news is that the median script, in general provides a better secondary source than either the SkyTV or Cinemax raw captures, and should be the main source for replacement frames in the final version. To some extent, I’ll be able to use the Blu Rays as a source as well, when necessary. This would mainly be limited to the title crawls and any subtitling. The main exceptions to this will be AOTC, where the colors of the Blu-Ray are significantly different and would require regrading, and TPM, where the Blu-Ray comes from a different video master.

To the extent that the median of three different captures is a way to automatically remove any of the most egregious errors, it relies on having three different captures derived from the same master. Unfortunately, at this point, I’ve not located a third different capture of Phantom Menace. I just have the German Premiere and the UK SkyTV versions. Those two are the two best, but a third is necessary to use the script. If it were any of the other films, I could just use the Blu Ray, but as I mentioned above, the TPM Blu Ray is derived from a different master. So, TPM will be the most challenging to fix, from the perspective of not having a third capture, however it doesn’t have the number of encoding issues that, for instance AOTC and ROTJ possess. Also, the UK source matches extremely well with the German source, and probably won’t require much work to match the color, detail, etc.

Anyway, Unfortunately the median method doesn’t represent a silver-bullet type fix for the 2004 HDTV masters, but does help fix some of its issues. Finishing the process is nearly a frame by frame process to look for the encoding issues, and I’m almost a the point of starting over again from scratch to get them where they need to be. It’s definitely a balance when doing this, as the German Source has tons of intermitant blocking in the darkest parts of the picture, or just broken frames. If you look frame by frame you will many times see a blocking issue every 50-100 frames that takes 3-5 more frames to clear up. It’s not always especially noticeable when watching at full speed, but many times is. I’m trying to figure out the right balance for when to replace frames, and when to just ignore the blocking. This just means that the process of getting this done will be very tedious and will take time.

Right now, I’m working on AOTC, as I think it has the most issues and will be the right place to perfect the techniques before moving on the other films.

I am very interested in learning what is improved from what you had on MySpleen. I’ve found those useful in replacing some of the changes to the BR for the OT. I’m not a big fan of the DVD versions of eps 1, 4, 5, & 6, but I consider the DVD version of 2 and 3 to be very important. Looking forward to hearing how this works out.

Not sure that it will benefit it too much, but perhaps a solid TPM DVD Upscale would provide a reasonably usable source? We’ve seen pretty amazing work done with OT upscales, and I know some scripts allow you to set how much a certain source will be used in the average.